Health insurance taxes will hurt small businesses, self-insured

For many Americans, the president's health care law is like a bomb that keeps exploding. Three years since its passage and the law that had promised to drive down costs and make health insurance more affordable for working families is proving a failure on all fronts. This is especially true when it comes to small businesses, their workers and the self-employed in Louisiana.

Beginning in 2014, millions of small businesses are set to take yet another hit from the billions in new health insurance taxes included in the president's health care law. The law calls this a "health insurance fee," but let's call a spade a spade: The estimated $100 billion in costs will ultimately fall on Main Street enterprises and the self-employed. And despite all the political rhetoric in Washington about "shared sacrifice," the nation's largest companies and labor unions are not subject to the tax. This is truly a tax on small business.

Fortunately, policymakers such as U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany are working to create a small business fix to the law to ensure our nation's greatest source of job creation and their employees aren't saddled with crippling new taxes that would make offering health insurance benefits too costly to provide for Louisiana workers and families. The Jobs and Premium Protection Act, bipartisan legislation recently introduced by Boustany and U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson , D-Utah, would establish a needed fix for small enterprises and their workers by repealing the tax before it can be implemented and before the economic and human impacts become real and painful for millions of families in Louisiana and throughout the country.

As protecting small businesses has historically remained top of mind for American voters, recent polls by Gallup have shown that the two greatest challenges faced by small businesses are higher health care costs and increased taxes. HIT combines both of these challenges into a single and unaffordable threat to their operations and the well-being of their employees. Congress would be wise not to have a memory loss on this and other challenges as we continue to face significant economic hurdles and work to place us back on a path to job growth and economic recovery.

Repealing the small business HIT would be a good start.

According to current Congressional Budget Office projections, the costs of the HIT will almost entirely be passed along to small businesses, their employees and the self-insured. To place the issue in context, a recent study by the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, found that, on average, the HIT will cost each family about $5,000 in higher premiums over a decade.

Congress can and should follow the bipartisan leadership of Boustany and Matheson to fix the HIT on small business. Prior to its passage, warnings about the cost and impact of the president's health care bill were well known. It was a classic case of the end justifying the means. Unfortunately, the end political goal of the law is now set to come at the expense of our local small businesses and the millions of workers they employ, and the quality of health care made available to them and their families. Those affected are not "zeros" and "ones" on a spreadsheet in front of bureaucrats in Washington; they are our friends and neighbors who operate and work at small enterprises in the communities we call home.

These small businesses and workers are not asking for special treatment or a handout. They simply want to have the federal government allow them to do what they do best; employ local workers, grow their businesses and contribute to the economic and social well-being of their respective communities. Repeal of this punitive tax, the HIT, is a necessary first step.

- Renee Amar and Dan Danner are

respectively the Louisiana state director and the CEO of the National Federation of

Independent Business.

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Health insurance taxes will hurt small businesses, self-insured

For many Americans, the president's health care law is like a bomb that keeps exploding. Three years since its passage and the law that had promised to drive down costs and make health insurance more

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